


The Announcement

by ahimsabitches



Category: Treasure Planet (2002)
Genre: F/M, unabashed deeply self-indulgent fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 20:05:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6871465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/pseuds/ahimsabitches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little glimpse into the future for Bonnie and Silver.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Announcement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ravenousgrue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenousgrue/gifts).



Three days, and he was still  _grinning_ like a cub who'd caught the biggest fish in the pond.

John had enjoyed doing absolutely bloody nothing for all of six days-- Bonnie'd only been off by one-- and then he'd gotten _itchy_. Despite his girth, he was not a lazy man (unless Bonnie and Morph happened to be napping on his belly). He'd lived most of his long years on the move, and  _moving_ was a hard habit to break.

While his wife was off  _speechifying_ and ruffling government feathers, John, with Morph's "help", raised a house, raised a shed like his father's, raised a garden, raised everything he could except the one thing he couldn't raise on his own. The one thing he would never ask Bonnie for outright, not until she was ready, but he asked her all the same, with every jolly grin, every worshipful touch, every smitten kiss.

So when Bonnie'd come to him with the paper from the doctor-- nervous as a lamb in a slaughterhouse, poor lass-- he'd just about turned himself  _inside out_. After he was done hooting and weeping and squeezing his wife until her eyes bugged out of her head, he'd sat her in his lap and cupped her sweet worried face in his hands-- she worried  _way too much-_ \- and done his best to assure her she wouldn't suffer her grandmother's fate.

Young when she’d gotten pregnant by an Ursid and alone but for her mother on a newly-terraformed semi-arid planet, the fully human woman, sizeable even for her species, had died giving birth to Bonnie’s father.

"T'ings're a bit different now than they were then," he'd said, thumbing a tear off her nearly-hairless cheek. "Y'won't be havin' our cub on some backwater rock. An' yeh certainly won't be alone," he'd smiled, knowing his mother would want to midwife Bonnie half to death, despite the only delivery she'd ever been around for being his own almost a hundred years ago.

She'd swallowed hard, leaned into his warm living hand. "This  _is_ a backwater rock, John. I had to go to the other side of the planet just to get a pregnancy test."

"Yeh get my meanin," he'd said, and she had. He'd had his own brief flicker of doubt; she wasn’t as small as her grandmother but she was  _small_ , after all, and her innards seemed to work more like a human's than an Ursid's. She had bleeding cycles instead of heats, and from what precious little he knew of human life cycles, their gestation periods had about three fewer months than Ursid pregnancies. Not to mention Ursid newborns hefted between double and double-and-a-half what human babies weighed. He wasn't sure how her body would reconcile a mostly human den with a mostly Ursid cub, but if the sawbones-- who'd been sawing bones on this  _backwater rock_ as long as John had been alive; the man had pulled him squalling and kicking from his mother-- hadn't crowed concern, he wouldn't either. "Speakin' of it, we oughtta tell our parents, y'think?"

Alarm had gripped Bonnie then, and she'd gripped his sleeve. "Oh gods,  _please_ not your parents yet. I need a bit of... I need time to... _process_ this before I’m ready to face your mother."

 _Humans_. Spent entirely too much time  _processing_ things, if his opinion mattered for aught, but John had understood her need for time. Especially time before they told his parents. He chuckled to himself, combing his living hand through his hair, grown out like his beard since he’d retired. Bonnie'd asked for it and called it an even trade; she'd let hers grow long enough to touch the small of her back, and John loved it, oh, loved running his living hand through those gentle redbrown waves, braiding them into an undulating rope that lay over her shoulder and shone like new copper in the sunlight. It made him fall in love with her all over again.

And he did so now, watching her bent over the foamy white wash of papers and files and books covering the low-squatting table in the living room, sharing half of the open space of the main room with the kitchen. It had used to be a coffee table, but Bonnie'd taken it over.

"Why're yeh not usin' the fine desk I built yeh?" he'd asked her as she'd deposited her work onto the coffee table with a papery whoosh and plunked herself down.

"Because I can't see you from all the way in the study," she'd said simply, and it had made his heart swell. From her place at the coffee table, she could turn her head one way and watch him in the kitchen, which he caught her doing frequently, to his great pleasure, or she could turn her head the other way and look out the window and see him in the garden. Of which he took advantage; when Bonnie was home, the days he went out to garden shirtless were short and _quite_ unproductive. 

So she sat on the floor, her legs tucked primly under her, Morph tucked into her shirt, quill scratching, and John loved her. Loved her with each beat of his heart and each click of his gears, each nerve and wire, each breath and blink. Loved her all the more for the cub she was keeping now, the exquisitely sweet payoff for every sacrifice he’d made, knowingly and not.

Ursid tradition dictated that the mother chose the name if it was a girl, and if it was a boy, it was named after the mother's grandmother. John's own great-grandmother had been Johannah. Bonnie had only mentioned her grandmother once, in the telling of her fears. When Bonnie had called her father to deliver the good news, he’d also invoked the ghost of his mother in a warning neither of them thought John could hear: “Be _careful_ , Eodana; I’d never forgive him if ye ended up like yer grandmother.”

John hadn’t heard Bonnie’s low-murmured response, but father and daughter had lain the matter to rest in their way. David Mercatur, half-Ursid and all tight-lipped suspicion of his father’s kind (and pirates that had nearly killed the entire family when Bonnie had been young), hadn’t warmed to John, and John didn’t think he ever would, not completely. But Bonnie was the axis around which they both turned, and so they orbited each other in a curt, courteous understanding.

It probably didn’t help that John was a paltry eight years younger than David, despite the advanced grey in David’s hair and beard. The first streaks of grey had just begun at John’s temples, jowls, and the center of his chin.

"Lassie, what's yer grandmother's name?" 

"Hmm?" she grunted around the quill in her mouth, not looking up from the litter of papers on the table.

He asked again, stuffing an armload of potatoes into the pantry. One slipped out of the netted sack and he caught it deftly with his cybernetic hand.

"Sophia. Why?"

John thought for a moment, but couldn’t come up with a way to masculinize a name like _Sophia._ Bonnie probably could, but she wasn't much for tradition anyway. He put the thought aside. That was a discussion he would enjoy sharing with her, like savoring a leisurely feast. "Jes' curious." He finished putting away the last of the radishes from the garden, slid the pantry door shut, and picked up the communicator on his way to his chair, a massive leather wingback, originally built by his grandfather. His father had retooled it and now in a few years, John would. And in some more years, perhaps his cub would. The thought made him grin again.

He dropped a kiss onto the top of Bonnie's head before sinking down; both he and the chair let out a creaky sigh. "About that time, Bonnie-me-lass," he said, waggling the communicator, about the size of his hand, at her. "Ye've called yer own pap. Me parents need t' know. Much longer an' me mum'll find out and skin me alive fer not tellin' her sooner." Sincerity and jest shared equal measure in his tone.

Bonnie looked up from her work. John watched her face kaleidoscope from hesitancy to alarm to resigned dismay. She let the quill fall from her mouth and sighed. "If your mother reacts to this anything like she did to our engagement, I’m afraid she’ll have a  _stroke_. She will  _keel over_  and that'll be that."

John couldn't help himself; he threw back his head and laughed. "Lassie, _trust_ me; she's been waitin' fer this moment fer me whole life. She'd chase off th' angel o' death hisself wit’ a shotgun afore she'd go without meetin' our cub. C'mere," he patted his living knee and she settled on it like she'd done many times before, leaning back on his chest. Morph oozed out of the pouch she'd sewn in her shirt specially for him and turned lazy chattering circles around their heads. John snugged his living arm around her, hand splayed out low on her belly, and dialed the hunting lodge’s number with his cybernetic hand. Bonnie absently brushed a kiss over his bearded cheek and he heard the snuffling in-breath she took as she nuzzled him. He gave her belly, and the tiny life growing there, a very gentle squeeze.

He hadn't minded Bonnie's figure before; she'd come by her wiry strength honestly. But it was all very  _human_ , the sinew and sharp edges. He'd always preferred his women full-figured and comfortably padded--  _Ursid-shaped_ \-- and now that Bonnie wasn't scampering back and forth between galley and rigging and deck, the edges and corners of her had filled in and softened. Her body still was, and would always be, mostly human, but John couldn't pretend he didn't prefer the yielding softness of her hips beneath his hands now more than the lean and corded slip of sinew that had been all there was before. Bonnie had complained, once, mildly, about her clothes not fitting like they had used to, but the renewed fervor--if it had ever dulled-- with which he made love to her had put an end to that.

He slipped a hand under her loose shirt, over the smoothness of her belly and chest, and gave her tit a squeeze. "Not in front of your parents, please," she said as a face swam into focus on the comm screen.

It was his father, a red coal from his pipe gleaming in each hooded, crowsfooted eye. "'Lo, son. Good t'see yeh, Bonnie." He nodded and his hoary eyebrows briefly eclipsed his eyes. The halo of pipesmoke around his head whirled with the motion.

"Hi, Papa Silver," Bonnie chirped.

"'Lo, Pap. How's game?"

He shrugged, less a deliberate movement of his massive shoulders and more a suggestion of motion, the spot in his silverwhite beard where his pipe stuck out lifting up a fraction. His voice, cragged by age, was as sonorous as his son’s, but much quieter. "Eh. Off season. Nothin' worth nothin' 'cep'--"

"Mister Silver? Who're yeh flappin' yer great  _yap_ to, eh? That better not be  _our boy_  or ye'll  _get it_ fer not tellin' me!"

Both men rolled their eyes and quirked their mouths in the same gesture that would grace the next generation of Ursids and drive Bonnie to furious distraction.

John's father was seated in his own chair; the only thing there was to see of his mother for a moment was the vast expanse of her skirt and bodice, the thick cord of her silver-brown braid dangling by one hand fisted onto her broad hip; she bent down and shoved her thunderous face into the comm screen with such suddenness that it unfocused.

"'Lo, Mum," John said, giving Bonnie a reassuring squeeze.

"It  _was_ you, me boy, I  _knew_ it; your good-for-naught father's keepin’ secrets from me.  _Wicked_  man. How are yeh?" she squinted her deep blue eyes, peered closer, made the video feed unfocus again. Her voice was ample and loud, melodic and deep. "Yeh look well fed enough. Bonns! Didn't see yeh, lassie, yer so  _tiny_. Good! John's keepin' yeh fed well too. Yeh were so  _skinny_ last time ye was here."

John's father was slowly edged out of the video feed by his blusterous wife until John could see only the spray of his beard and one ear. John’s mother perched herself on her husband’s knee and John’s father looped his arm around her waist in unconscious mimic of their children.

"When're yeh comin' over fer a visit? Yeh know we jus' live a skiff-ride away. I miss yeh both terribly, yeh know I do."

"You just saw us three weeks ago," Bonnie said, eyebrow cocked.

"Aye, lass, but that was three weeks ago!" John's mother said, equally baffled.

John chuckled. Whether it was a difference between humans and Ursids or between Mercaturs and Silvers, _frequent family visits_ had radically different meanings to John's wife and mother.

"We actually have a bit o' news, Mum," he said, drawing Bonnie close. Morph chirruped softly between them.

"Oh? Good news, I hope. Mister Silver, pay attention, yeh  _git_ , John's got somethin' t'tell us. 'Ave ye finally decided t' trade in that horrible ruddy ship ye're still keepin' at that dock an'--"

"I'm having a baby," Bonnie blurted.

John's parents' faces seemed to swap expressions: his father's face pulled up from its normal dourness into a grin visible even beneath his beard, and his mother's fell from garrulous good humor into a comic O of shock.

John braced himself.

"Congra--" John's father began, and his mother's skull-splitting _screech_ blasted through the comm with such utter  _force_ that it frayed both the audio and video feeds into static. Bonnie jumped in his lap like a frightened kitten and muttered a curse. Morph dove behind his head and hid in his hair. When the static cleared, the screen was a blur of motion, then John's father's well-lined, silver-furred face was the only one in view. His mother's ecstatic shrieks, from the other room, resolved, eventually, into words. But he couldn't make them out, not when she caromed from room to room: Typhoon Mum. Memories pinged at John, but now was not the time to indulge fond recollections of his mother yelling about one thing or another during his youth. Which was most of how she spent her time anyway.

"Well, she's not _dead_ ," Bonnie said, waggling a finger in her ear.

" _Told_ yeh." John gave her a gentle nudge. Morph floated out from behind John and oozed onto his shoulder.

"Dead? Oh no, me lass, yeh jes' gave Missus Silver a new reason t'live." John's father glanced behind him-- _I'mgonnahavegrandcubsIcan'tbelieveitAAIIIEEEEE--_ and chuckled, eyes alight with more than just his pipe. "Powers willin' an' the creek don’ rise, Missus Silver'll be around t' spoil the hell outta yer cubs fer a great many years yet.”

" _One_ cub.  _One_ ," Bonnie admonished, holding up an emphatic finger.

"One, two, five,  _ten_ , I dinna  _care_!" John's mother sprinted back into the den and yanked the comm from her husband's hand. "Oh, bless ye, Bonns, bless ye both! John! It's about  _time,_  ye great lugnut! Ye'll 'ave t' ‘ave it here, a'course, Bonns. I'll call Doc Harrell. Yes, an' did ye know Mister Silver's been hackin' away at a crib for the wee bairn? That we'll 'ave here, too, so ye can stay as long as yeh like. Ah, I'm gonna be a  _grandmother_! John! John me boy!" His mother pressed the comm so close John could see the hairs curling in her nostrils.

"Aye, mum?"

She blinked. "I forget! Nevermind! Bah! Mister Silver, prepare the skiff! John me love, Bonns, we're comin' over! This calls fer a celebration!" The video feed blurred; his mother was walking with the comm into another room.

"Oh no," Bonnie whispered. John gave her a squeeze.

"They don't have t' stay long, lass," he murmured into her ear while his mother blustered and bustled on the other end of the comm. "She won't listen t'me, but y'know she'll leave when y'tell her to."

And it was true; John's mother had taken her sweet time in warming up to Bonnie of twice-diluted Ursid blood, but once she had judged her a worthy match for her only child and darling son, she had taken the young woman for the daughter she'd never had. And Ursid culture being what it was, mothers, daughters,  _women_ , could accomplish more with a single word than men could with a year's worth and fists besides.

"Bonnie love!" John's mother called into the comm. "Dinna ye move! We'll be there soon! Mister Silver! Ye laggardly  _dolt_ , why's the skiff not ready?!"

Bonnie coughed a weak laugh. "I don't think the cub'll come between now and the time you get here, Mama Silver."

Just before John ended the call, he caught his mother giving his father a mighty swat with his own coat. He sighed and sat back in the chair, tipping Bonnie back with him by his hand on her belly. Morph, disturbed by the motion, floated up and wandered off. She mashed the heels of her hands into her eyes and groaned. "I just wanted to finish this speech, eat supper out on the porch, listen to the nightbirds for a while, have a nice slow fuck in the hammock, and go to bed. That's all I wanted."

John kissed her temple, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her fuzzy ear. "We've got at least two hours, mebbe two an' a half, until they get here," he murmured. "I'll whip up somethin' quick fer us in half a tick. We can listen to th' birds while we eat. We'll have plenty o’ time fer that hammock, Bonnie-me-lass."

"That speech is  _nowhere_ near done, John." Bonnie said, letting her hands flop to her sides. "It’s in Aldeb. I’m so rusty I have to call Hamoud for every third word. I've got at  _least_  two hours left on it, probably more. It's got to be done by tomorrow."

"When tomorrow?" John asked, grazing his teeth along the velvet of her ear. She shivered in his arms.

"Mmm, afternoon. Or night. Or something. Whenever."

"So it can wait, then," John rumbled and breathed her in as he kissed down her neck, over the faint but steady pulse there. Her scent, bewitching as ever, had already begun to change in a way John couldn't verbalize but something deep and old and Ursid in him knew, and he loved it, loved it like he loved everything else about her. She gripped a fistful of his hair in one hand and, arching her back and looping her legs around his living one, slid her other hand down his front to take a handful of his cock, already halfway to hard.

"Or maybe hammock first," she breathed.

 


End file.
